


Blood Moon

by heli0s



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Memory Loss, Rehabilitaton, Unstable Reader, endgame spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-02-08 15:47:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18626323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: You and Bucky Barnes cross each other's paths in 2014. You meet again and again and share the winding road of rehabilitation together.*Spoilers for Endgame, please do not read if you haven't seen it*





	1. River Water and Ash

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Background information and chronicling a timeline with Bucky.

There had been many milestones that aided in the creation of who you were; because of them you adapted and learned, changed and grew, they made you. It’s what you liked to think because truthfully, you couldn’t remember them. Nick Fury saw to that. Most of what you could recall were embryonic memories, fuzzy visions and lingering copper odors.

Your body was a hard weapon, thanks to SHIELD training and a mutant gene. You had the ability to induce dream states with a single touch and read minds through memory exploration. You didn’t know who you were outside of SHIELD, and Fury never held a conversation with you about it. He only insisted that when he found you, you’d been awake for three months and wandering the Painted Desert in a feverish state. He took you under his wing and placed you on the path of convalescence.

 

It worked. You were successful in your missions and after four years, Coulson recommended your transfer to the Avengers team. Stark watched you in the beginning with a careful eye, claiming that so much of your file had been redacted that it mostly looked like a black Rothko painting. You were truthful with him, and the rest, about how little you knew of the scars on your back or your mutant abilities; you were here to work because work was the life that made any sense.

The Avengers were kind to you, and you quickly became friends with all of them. Steve Rogers seemed to be in a similar state of unknowing, fumbling through this decade after his discovery. You two naturally grew close and navigated the world together as teammates and friends.

 

In your recovery, there were three, very particular, very deep, scarring, haunting and woven moments that you will never, ever forget no matter how hard you have tried to smoke them out. They taste like river water, and ash, and blood.

 

In the 2014, at the Triskelion collapse, it began.

You’d chased the Winter Soldier for months alongside Steve and Natasha, this ghost of a man who’d torn through Nat and seemingly killed Fury- the man you owed your life to. He was monstrous and terrifying, his legend preceding his presence. That horrible gait and frightening metal arm flipped your car and sent you over a bridge. His kill shot missed by a hair and ripped across your head, cutting past your face from the corner of your eye to just above your ear. The wound wept for days before finally scarring over into a permanently angry red line.

There was something deeply frightening about him; a creature who moved so strangely comfortable in the shadows, destructive like a force of nature imbued with darkness. You had tried to use your powers on him, that fateful day but the ferocity of his mind made your own felt like it might split in two.

There were only wild flashes of razor-sharp pain as you struggled to process his consciousness: burning flesh and shrieks, soldering smoke, a frozen grip of unreality, and then the feeling of being torn into over and over again. Your grip on the Soldier was loose, and Steve admitted to you later, upon waking your drenched body in the fit of a nightmare, that for the three split seconds you’d held the Soldier’s temple in your hand, blood rushing from your head wound, you were in so much pain he was afraid for your life.

Those three everlasting seconds took hold of your mind, pantomiming at night as you hovered between consciousness and sleep.  Along with the phantom feel of the bullet past your temple, you struggled to feel like yourself again. The scars on your back began to burn.

 

When his mask fell and Steve recognized him- Bucky Barnes, you felt sick to your stomach.

The chase came on stronger, harder, more desperate. On top of the Hellicarrier, you and Steve took turns landing and receiving the Soldier’s punches. When Steve threw his shield, you refused his command to leave and scrambled on Barnes. He’d thrown you off and choked with that wicked arm until you passed out. Your body fell into the water along with the two of them.

It was a miracle you’d survived. The slam of your back against water felt like falling into a bed of knives and jolted you awake. You had just the smallest amount of strength enough to pull yourself out into the shore, vomiting the mud and water from your lungs. 200 feet away, you watched through bursting spots in a blurry field of vision, The Soldier lifted Steve from the water and dropped him onto the shore. By the time you stumbled over to resuscitate Steve, Barnes had vanished and the marks on your neck bloomed purple and blue finger-shaped petals.

The terror came for you once more at night in flashes: searing pain on your shoulders, lashings across the bottoms of your feet, injections and drownings, towels over your face, and rope burns on your wrists.

 

In 2016 you travelled with Steve to Bucharest, where Barnes was hiding. You came cautiously, fearful and coiled tight. Steve wanted his friend while you wanted his memories returned- for both your sake and his. He lived on, this Boogeyman of yours, and the memories you had could only be rescinded onto him.

When you grappled him enough to land your palm to his bristled jaw, those terrible flashes came on longer, reels of short movies with Steve and uniforms, an elementary classroom, street boxing, girls with coiffed hair… then more flashes, booms of guns and snaps of knives slicing, so many faces in their last moments, coupled with Barnes’ mind reeling against them. When he punched you away, the look in his eye was enough to make you understand: he remembered. He remembered them.

 

You vomited in a private bathroom in Berlin when they caught him. Only Steve believed you when you screamed that it wasn’t him. Those burning films of pain ripped your insides and flared through the scars on your back. You relived a number of indistinguishable years in cold flashes on the bathroom tile- unsure who they belonged to.

 

 

It might have been stupid, but you volunteered to go with him- this man you didn’t know- to Wakanda. You were silent when questioned, especially with his steel blue eyes, but it needed to be done. Steve was eager that Barnes would have someone that might have his interests in mind- you’d be able to soothe him with your powers and all the while help him pick up his memories. You had your own agenda. There was more to be discovered in his recollections that struck many cords within you. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but you hoped spending more time with him would let the mystery of your past unravel. You planned on staying for only six months.

Six months turned into a year, and soon enough you’d spent two of them by Bucky Barnes’ side. Shuri was your guide as you travelled through memories of the Soldat, pointing you in the right direction and interrupting the neural wavelength when it seemed like either of you might be in trouble.

There were many accidents in her lab in the first season, Bucky’s instability partnered with your own created tension between the two of you. Sometimes he’d come out of a session with weepy, watery eyes full of regret, and sometimes he’d awaken tearing through cords and monitors, accusatory and vengeful. The two of you danced around each other warily, never really knowing what the other wanted.

You’d seen him at his worst, over and over again, like an omniscient spectator. You knew a part of him resented you for it.

In your quarters, you wrestled with the peculiar twisting of your consciousness. Sometimes you felt like yourself, sometimes you didn’t. There were days when you were afraid of opening the door and could only sleep on the floor under the bed. Some days you couldn’t leave your chambers or eat any meals. Sunshine felt traitorous, happiness a fantasy.

Shuri gave you sedatives for the nights that the burning on your back kept you awake. In the middle of a particularly rough nightmare, she’d woken you up, fingers digging deep into your shoulders. Barnes was in the doorway, screaming, landing blows onto the wall.

“There are monsters!” She had cried as she shook you, “Monsters in the room! Sergeant Barnes! Sergeant Barnes! Wake her!”

He’d thrown you into the shower that night and the freezing spray of ice-cold water shook you from the depths of slumber. The two of them, Shuri and Barnes, slumped against the wall and sat fearfully as you struggled to snap from the haze. The shadows that flickered and crept along the floor towards them vanished when you opened your eyes.

After that, Shuri found a way to reverse the neural link and transfer your abilities inside the dreamscape. You and Barnes took turns exploring each other’s heads. When you walked through Iran with the Soldier, Barnes wandered in the Painted Desert with the silhouette of your sickly figure trudging over dunes of red sand.

He began to see more and more of you- more than you’d ever known existed. He uneasily watched you as a toddler crawl on a molted carpet, scattered with needles and trash. He smelled the flesh of your back burning against spoons, blurry figures laughing as they pressed, a child’s cries,  _yours_ , ripping through his ears. You couldn’t tell him where those came from. When he relayed it to you, not a trace of familiarity emerged.

When he yanked the back of your shirt up and counted all the round scars, you sobbed into his touch.  _Spoons_ , he had said,  _these are from spoons_. Somebody in your past burned you with them as a child. You asked about the lash-shapes and monsters, but he didn’t yet know.

The two of you followed the schedule of rehabilitation austerely, even asking Shuri for more of them, but she denied your requests. They were too grueling, she said, you could only do so much before both your “little brains would break”. Over time, months and months, Barnes got better. He no longer responded to the words in the red book; Shuri had found a way to reset his HYDRA programming.

You, however, deteriorated, only sleeping four hours a night and were monitored throughout. You were not allowed to slip into REM, and you drifted in and out of being during the day. Sometimes you’d stare off in a state of in microsleep and experienced inexplicable time loss.

The monsters were kept from appearing, but you passed through the days like a zombie.

At the beginning of the second year you’d snap the link like a brittle thread and rose from the table, howling. It was your turn to remember.

 

You recalled your childhood, a dirty trailer in Jersey, two young addict parents who tortured you in their frenzied states of high. You remembered hiding under the bed, the whippings and hot spoons, injections when you cried too loud, nights in a closet barricaded off by broken furniture, and then when times were too desperate for your parents, and the supplies were running too low, they sold you.

You recalled a pudgy balding man in a suit and an eggshell white business card. You remembered the clammy wet feel of his fat fingers shoving you into a car… and you remembered the injections and torture once more. Gene experiments. They were trying to activate the latent mutant gene in humans. For almost a week you were pumped full of poison, waterboarded, burned, starved, sliced into, finally they kept you tied to a chair in a solitary room and kept you awake for five days. On the sixth day, the apparitions appeared. You were activated, just as they wanted.

On the seventh day, you were sold off yet again, armed collar snapped tight around your neck, willpower completely zapped. How long you were under the control of this master, you didn’t know- only remembering bits and pieces of killing and many nights of tearing into new bodies. The beasts you were able to summon were made of shadows, tendrils rising from your back before transforming into horrid beings that cut into your opponents.

But there was something wrong with them- or perhaps, with you. You recalled that one night you’d woken up and everything around you was ablaze, your shades roaming around, pouring themselves into the surroundings. You escaped. The rest of it, you figured, must have been around the time Fury found you in the desert. The time in-between was something you feared to remember. There was a reason you were awake for so long, isolated from the rest of the world.

Shuri tried to contact the Avengers after that day, hoping to find more information about what may have passed or intelligence on how to control your nightmares, but to no avail. Steve had gone back underground, and you didn’t want to bring Bucky’s whereabouts to light. She had cursed a string of profanities in Xhosa before clapping both hands together on your shoulders.

“Don’t worry.” She had proclaimed, “I, Shuri, will get this  _shit_  out of your head.”

 

She did try. Shuri spent days in her lab after that, attempting the same technique of creating the representation of your mind- just as she’d done for Barnes- and extract the permanent parts of your memories that haunted you. Whatever Fury had done was temporary, she said, this method would remove the memories permanently. Bucky was unsure of it and raised questions.

“But this is a part of her, it’s not HYDRA brainwashing, it’s her actual life.”

“Sergeant Barnes, I ask you, would you like to live with these memories?” Shuri snapped in reply.

You weren’t sure what the best course of action was. You admitted you didn’t know about the monsters until these memories became unlocked, but maybe Bucky had a point- perhaps it wasn’t as simple as erasure. What if she took them away and they took parts of you with them? You asked instead, if Shuri could rehabilitate you. Perhaps what your mind needed was peace, not deletion.

She had thought it over before glancing between the two of you, then nodding sincerely, “Maybe the simple life will do both of you good.”

 

 

For the rest of the second year, the two of you spent it together closely, living on the Wakandan land. It was a bizarre arrangement, to be sure, one that you never expected to have enjoyed as much as you did. Some days you woke up and couldn’t help laughing at the oddity of it all. You and Bucky Barnes shared a grass-thatched hut with two straw beds on opposite sides, a table in the middle by the post flanked by two chairs, and a small fireplace along the back wall where you learned to cook millet and cassava and experimented with banana leaves from the farm.

There were no more schedules to be had, no more investigations into either of your memories. You took walks and swam in the river and thought of nothing but the goats and chickens that lived among you and the steady breathing of Bucky Barnes at night.

It was a silly foray into domestic life; if Bucky tended the land, you fed the animals. If you cooked dinner, he washed the dishes. If you scrubbed the clothes, he’d hang them up to dry. The two of you passed the time by reading and venturing into the market, trading lighthearted stories of your old friends, careful not to breach any subjects that might be triggering. Shuri checked in three times a week and playfully scolded the children who came by to see the two of you. You never minded their presence and often chased them around in jest.

You were finally able to sleep. There were measures in place just in case you’d have terrors, but after the first week, they didn’t return. Shuri scanned your brain from time to time, finding threads to pull on, unraveling the mystery of your powers precariously. The three of you continued the arrangement in the meantime.

Bucky thrived under the Wakandan sun. He grew out his beard and hair -something you often teased him about- and studied all the history he’d missed out on. He’d walk with you to the water and sit under the shade while you paddled about. You often had picnics together outside as the animals grazed. He loved your stews and curries, and you loved the way he smiled with leaf-shaped shadows falling over his eyes. You thought once, in the middle of dinner, maybe you could tell him that somewhere along the way, he had become more than a companion.

 

 

When T’Challa came for you, long metal case in hand, you knew it was over.

“Where’s the fight?” Bucky had asked, gazing at the vibranium cybernetic arm. You watched his jaw clench, edges of his mouth pulled together. Thanos was coming, T’Challa had warned, he was coming for the entire universe and the two of you needed to be a part of the resistance.

At the bottom of the case beneath the arm was something that looked like half a tiara. There were blue prongs that jutted from it. T’Challa explained that Shuri had been working on developing a device to let you control your summons. She called it your Halo. He requested that you wore it into battle.

When you helped Bucky snap on the arm later that afternoon, tears began to run down your face inexplicably, and you excused yourself to bed.

He sat at the foot of your cot that night, flexing the plates quietly as he waited for you to acknowledge him. “We can’t sit this out.” He muttered, “This is bigger than you or me.”

“I know that.” You replied under the sheet, “I… I guess I got caught up in this. This place. This little hut. It was just starting to feel like a home.”

He had laughed, placing his flesh hand over your ankle with a small squeeze, “How ‘bout this?” he began, “After all this, if we make it, I’ll meet you back here.”

You didn’t sleep that night, only watched the outline of his figure in the dark.

 

The two of you suited up the next day and met the Avengers as they landed. You’d placed the Halo on in the morning, its prongs attaching to the back of your head and over your ear. Bucky watched the frame of it resting on the scar tissue near your eye as you tied your hair away from your face.

“Guess I never apologized for that, did I?” He looked sad. You brushed him off, craning your neck towards the aircraft making its descent.

“You can make it up to me later.” You meant it as a joke, but he suddenly squeezed your hand tightly with his flesh one, fingers poking out from the gloves. His eyes burned brightly into yours.

“I will.”

 

 

You stayed by his side during the battle, tearing through Outriders with creatures of your creation, maneuvering through the thick of alien limbs to rip into what you could physically with knives. There were times when Bucky couldn’t tell which monster was yours and which was from the Black Order. The bloodlust of your shadows terrified him, reminding him of the night you’d summoned them in your sleep.

The two of you raged on through the crowd, killing what you could so the others could take on Thanos. You were cut and bleeding from your side near the end, holding onto Bucky as you made your way into the trees where you watched Thanos disappear into a cloud of smoke out of Thor’s clutch, Stormbreaker falling to the ground with a thud.

Bucky stumbled once, holding up the cybernetic arm around your shoulder. “Steve?” He called.

“It’s okay, I got you.” You touched the fingers, pulling it down to steady the both of you, but suddenly the tips of his hand began to fade, breaking apart in your grasp. The weight on your back had began to disappear.

“Bucky?” You had cried, turning frantically to see his arm and chest vanishing into bits of dust. “Bucky?! No! No! NO!”

 

By the time Steve had rushed over, you were shrieking on the ground, scrambling on all fours to gather the ash in your hands, unintelligible through your tears. The blue prongs of the Halo turned deep red.

 

 

You didn’t see him for five years. You didn’t see  _anybody_  for five years.

 


	2. Blood and Burning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events following the Decimation: grief, wrath, returning to the start.

You had fallen off the grid after the Decimation. Natasha and Steve tried to keep you at the Facility, but despite their best efforts, you disappeared one morning without a warning. Steve surmised that Bucky’s death had taken its toll on you. He could see it, he way you guarded Bucky during the fight- as if he needed guarding- that _something_ had passed during your time in Wakanda together. T’Challa revealed to him that you’d been cohabitating, but you only stared at the Captain ferociously when he tried to bring it up.

For the week that you stayed with them, you said nothing, ate nothing, and didn’t sleep. You visited the museum before you left, lingering on the display of him, tears streaming down your face.

 

In those five years, you passed in and out of the world, flitting between a constant state of wrath or despair. You had no anchor to keep you from lashing out or caving in. You had no purpose. You had nothing but those green memories.

You tried to find one, though, hardening your heart against the apocalyptic world and went on self-imposed missions to ruin those who had ruined you. In the first year you found the facility in New York where they’d injected you all those years ago, burned to the ground, so you moved on and sniffed out other facilities around the country.

By the second year, you’d destroyed six similar facilities throughout the states. Along the way, you infiltrated dens of gangs, who took advantage of the Decimation to expand their territories and exploit what was left of the population. You fed your shadows well. The Halo remained red and compromised, its infrastructure falling apart slowly. It crackled against your head, sometimes firing off sparks of energy. In a particularly chaotic fight against a backdrop of smoldering walls and crumbling beams, you saw a figure against the smoke. Wide shoulders, fluttering long hair, and that terrible, fearsome step.

You screamed his name into the blaze but when you reached him, he was gone.

The week after that, you woke in a jolt to find him… _it_.. standing at the foot of your bed. He was a figment if your imagination, a creation of anguish and loneliness. The Halo by your bedside sparked erratically throughout the night as he swayed around the room. There was nothing but his outline; no single strand of hair that could be perceived; no generous, boyish mouth; no beautiful twinkling eyes.

You were fine. If all you could get was his horizon against moonlight, like that last night in Wakanda, you’d take it.

He stayed with you day and night and all the times in-between. You loved him as much as you could with the rot in your heart. You talked to him, as utterly insane as it was, you talked to him as if he could understand. You held conversations, waxed poetic, blurted meaningless trivia and broke down as he lingered impassively. You danced around him. You ate dinner perched on countertops next to him.

In the fifth year, as you made your way down to Mexico, you happened to run into Clint Barton, fresh from a slaughter.

“You gonna rat me out, kid? Try to take me in, too?” He spat, pulling the hood of his suit up.

“I don’t give a shit what you do.” You replied.

Barton noticed the bags under your eyes were a deep blue, the once-fleshy cushions of your cheeks hollow and gaunt.

“Is that… Barnes?” He stiffened as the specter soundlessly marched behind you.

You shrugged before walking away. “Not really.”

-

It was broken. Just like you. And just like him.

The wires were frying inside of your specialized headdress. More and more each day you could hear it against your ear sizzling. You could see it affecting the shadows. They lashed out more, were restless to kill, as if knowing that without the Halo they’d be returned to dust. The Soldier was the worst of them all, especially vicious as he tore through flesh and bone. He kept you awake and demanded more blood. It wasn’t a struggle; you were happy to obey him. If Shuri could see you now, enslaved to your darkness, what would she say?

But Shuri’s dead too. So it didn’t matter.

-

In the dusky sunset of a windy day as you walked through another desolate street on the East Coast, the final snap of your Halo fired off. The Soldier by your side flickered and turned to regard his arm, already whisked off by the breeze. Your heart dropped into your stomach. It was a scene you’d witnessed before.

“NO!” You had screamed, slamming the flimsy piece of technology against your hand. Anything to nudge it back to life. You couldn’t do this again.

He took a step forward before his right leg was carried away.

“BUCKY!”

-

You showed up to Stark’s pleasant little log cabin a week later. In the five days that it took you to get there, you’d been haunted by flickers of him— _it_ —seemingly appearing at random. It was beyond difficult to differentiate now between reality and dreamscape, between him or his shadow. Every time he’d appear you pulled on another thread of hope, only to have it snipped from your hand seconds later. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t _really_ him; Your heart hurt the same, either way.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” Tony demanded after he sent his daughter away. His brown eyes uneasily sized you up- dressed in rusty blood-stained rags and seething with pain. Pepper watched you sadly from behind the screen door before shutting it firmly. You threw the Halo into his hands.

“Fix it, Tony. I need you to fix it. I have to see him again.”

“See _who_?” He took a second to fumble with the item in his hand, scrutinizing the damage you’d done to it. “What the hell is this thing?”

You ground your teeth wrathfully, feeling red-hot on your back.

“Holy shit-stick! Barnes?” The figure whipped in the air behind you, summoned forth for a split second before disappearing into the air. “What the hell, kid… what happened to you?” He shoved you back, away from the door, away from his home. “What _happened_ in Wakanda?”

Tony continued to advance until you were in the garden, stepping gingerly around the plots of land. His eyes roamed your face in attempt to parse the bits of your life he hadn’t seen. The red around your eyes looked permanent, your hair was in uneven lengths all around, growing longer for the most part, but not resembling of any real haircut he’d ever seen. There were open scrapes and cuts half-healed on every part of your body that was visible. Tony gaped soundlessly; you looked like hell. This was not the same person he had worked and lived with in the past.

 

He hadn’t seen you in nearly seven years. The last time you spoke, you’d screamed yourself hoarse at him in Berlin. He said something along the lines of ... you couldn’t remember... some diatribe about getting lost down memory lane and stirring up your Froot Loops in Barnes’ milk-bowl head. Well, he ended up being absolutely correct about that, didn’t he? But he was looking at you now with more sympathy than you could stomach.

“Black Rothko.” You muttered, recalling the analogy he had use for your redacted personal files. “Doesn’t matter. Can you fix it or can’t you?”

The gravel path of the driveway crunched under the sound of heavy tires. The two of you looked up to see a familiar car pull up to the house. By the time Steve had rushed from the driver’s seat and toward Tony, calling your name, you’d vanished.

“Wh-What- How long?”

Tony only shrugged and rubbed his face in his hands, handing off the Halo, “The kid is cuckoo, Rogers. She’s _Psycho_ -levels fucked up, showed up here with this thing… I think it’s connected to her powers. I think I saw Barnes’s fucking… ghost.”

Steve spun wildly, trying to find any trail of you.

Natasha put her hand on his shoulder. “We’ve got other things to talk about.” She carefully reminded him, nodding to Tony.

For the second time that day, Tony Stark was presented with another seemingly impossible request.

 

When the Mobius Strip worked and the algorithm calculated itself to be 98 and some odd fucking percent successful, Tony fell backwards. His chest pounded or perhaps stopped pounding. The blood in his veins either roared and burned or turned straight into ice. Maybe both. Next to his work desk sat the Halo on its side.

Shit, he thought, if he could undo the Decimation, a little Wakandan headband should be easy as pie.

-

Steve had found you wandering the compound the day before their so-called “Time Heist”. You told him it was a stupid name and that he shouldn’t be listening to somebody calling themselves “Ant-Man”, but you couldn’t deny the thundering of excitement you began to feel. The possibility of vengeance bloomed inside of you, making you sick with joy. Thanos was going to eat the last five years of your miserable fucking life.

 

You remained unchecked during the Collapse of the Avengers Facility. Darting in and out of being awake and asleep, you moved like a phantom through the rubble, finding the Halo tight in Barton’s grasp as he ran. He threw it at you, down the hall, water sloshing beneath your feet as you snapped it on and summoned hell beasts to your side along with your _Soldat_. One foot in front of the other, you and your shadows sliced through Outriders, Barnes’ specter gleefully tearing off limbs your knife fell into.

-

You found him.

He was there, on the other side of the hill. Just as heavenly as the day he’d left. Ragged wavy locks, scruffy long beard, cold look in his eyes as he stared ahead into the sea of alien bodies. The Soldier by your side followed your gaze soundlessly before flickering, black flames licking at your ankles. He swiftly plunged a sharp limb into a creature flinging itself at you, tearing it from jaw to tail, blood splattering across the side of your face. Bitter. Acidic.

You smeared it down, watching the sticky and glistening solution drip off your fingers.

Pride swelled inside, a sudden rumble, and you erupted in a sharp bark of laughter as you blinked the fluid from your eyes. Goddamn it.

It was hard not to love something you created, birthed in this madness of isolation and sorrow. He was so perfect, your companion in the darkness and destruction. He’d been with you for so long. And you had been so eager to cast him aside.

You took another wistful look at Bucky, the real Bucky, in the distance, throwing the rifle over his shoulder with that effortless grace. Would that sharp mouth ever tease your eagerness for spices again? Whisper goodnight in the dark like he used to? Pull you onto the shore after a swim, complain when your shoes laid haphazardly but pick them up anyway, throw grains into your hair...? If he knew...

Your stomach twisted in a moment of panic. You chewed on your lip in agony, tears prickling at your eyes.

Oh fuck it all. The pain inflamed the longer you watched him. He would never… never see you the way you saw him. It wasn’t like you had ever told him.

The Soldier went on ahead and you followed suit.

Well, at least you had... something.

-

Your name was carried downwind, flying through the explosions and finding its way into your ear. Shuri ran up beside you, blasters shooting the targets threatening to creep up. She pumped her arms with every blast, regarding the ghost by your side in surprise.

“Is that Sergeant Barnes!” she screeched, “You! You summoned THAT?”

You had nothing. What could you say, anyway? You missed this pretend-lover of yours so much that you created a ghoul in his image to keep you company? Shuri could wonder on her own.

“It is terrifying!”

A hail of bullets fired past your head and you whipped around just in time to see and hear a round of returning shots embedding into advancing alien bodies. They splattered and dropped on the ground.

“Never seen you this careless. Don’t get spooked on me, now.” He stepped toward you. Him. His sweet eyes, for the first time in five long years, they looked at you. He saw you. A smile broke out over his face. “God, I’ve--"

Then, just as sudden as his arrival, his expression changed as he caught sight of his doppelganger, featureless and dark, smoldering in the wind. Those beautiful eyes darted back and forth warily, as if unsure of the reality in his presence.

“You two! Not the time!” Shuri cried again, catching the moment surrounding her. She blasted powerful beams forward. “NOT NOW!”

You took your shades and ran deeper into the mass of Outrider bodies. Even worse than Bucky not looking at you at all was the thought of Bucky looking at you like _that._

-

Thanos had you gripped in his massive hand, fingers curling around your skull, crushing the Halo between his palm and your head. Tony was on his other hand, wrestling the glove from his clutch. Your body was tired, sore, and drained from battle. It swung limply, like your willpower to continue on. The attempt to tranquilize him only lasted a minute before he overpowered your compulsion. Your shadows circling him wavered with every crackle of the Halo until they sputtered out in the breeze. The spikes of your wreath dug deep into your head.

“I am inevitable.”

These were going to be the last words that you’d ever hear. Rumbling from Thanos, the scumfuck piece of shit that tore your barely put-together life down. You started to laugh as he tightened his grip. Somethings were just too funny to be coincidence.

Your eyes rolled back as he squeezed, blood running in rivers from your nose and ears.

The last thing you remembered was the slam of your head onto the earth, a sudden stillness enveloping the battleground, and white light.

 

 

You woke a week later next to Shuri, tapping away on a holographic keyboard. Barely with a moment to get your bearings together, she told you that Stark’s funeral was two days away. You hardly had time to process Natasha, either- no one had told you until that moment.

“The best thing to do—”

You had snapped at her, yanking out wires and fluids from your arms and throwing them onto the floor. Your legs swung over the side of the bed before folding underneath your weight. Shuri scoffed and snatched you up.

“Listen to me,” she commanded, “I am sorry. I don’t know what happened to you in the last five years, but bad manners will not solve your problems. Especially not in my lab!

She was cross with you as she held up the Halo, “ _And_ , you broke it! This was my favorite thing!”

 

You couldn’t do it. This… fantasy of pretending like nothing happened. Your head felt like it was continuously splitting into two and you couldn’t fathom what to say to Bucky. In all the foolish scenarios you made up in your head through the years, the one where he comes back good as new, and you’re still … you… was the one you never lingered on.

So you avoided him, pretended you were too weak to make conversation, and he flew to New York on his own.

Barton was waiting by a tree after you stepped through Strange’s portal. His family was inside with Pepper and Morgan. With a single glance and a crook of his finger, he called you over.

“You get yourself straight?” He asked, recalling the time you found him in Mexico.

“No. You?”

“I’m trying. It’s easier to get back in the swing of things when you got people that remember who you used to be. Family helps.”

“Good for you.” You stepped out of the shade.

“Hey, kid… Nat always thought of you as family. Maybe try thinking of us as yours, too.”

-

After the funeral, Bucky found you standing in the garden. You were a vision in all black, just how he remembered. You looked older, he thought, than before. Bucky always found your youthful appearance a point of pain- you were fresh, young, regardless of what happened in your past, you always smiled. Even after you remembered all of the things he’d seen in your head, you were still so bright. It was something he had been envious of for a long time.

Your foot tapped against the soil feebly, trying to distract your mind. Bucky swallowed, feeling his heart knock around in his chest. He had been by your bedside for the last week, monitoring your every pulse. There were so many things he wanted to tell you. When you woke up and refused to see him, he thought he was being ripped apart again.

He couldn’t imagine what you had gone through. Steve filled him in only bits and pieces, admittedly not knowing much himself and not wanting to tell a story that wasn’t his. He felt like he’d only been gone for minutes, falling asleep and then waking up to find T’Challa next to him, ready for battle. But they said it was five years and he couldn’t stop asking if it was a joke.

Then all he could think about was finding you. During the battle, you were more blood than flesh, covered head to toe. You looked different, fearless in a way that made Bucky’s entire being seize up with dread. If you were staring down the barrel of a gun, Bucky was sure you’d be laughing. He watched you do just that in Thanos’ grip, horrified at the sound just as much as the torrential blood pouring from your head.

That wasn’t how he remembered you. That wasn’t the person who slept across from him, who cooked those mouth-watering meals always too damn spicy for his tongue, who teased him when he broke the plates but picked them up anyway. All those times in the lab when he woke up from a rough session, you’d be watching him from the corner of your eye, just waiting with a small incline on your lips. You always lingered and walked with him to his room, even if he screamed at you not to.

You weren’t that person anymore.

 

Chewing on your lip viciously, you were glaring at the cavity in the dirt your boot had made. He didn’t know what to say, but he had to try.

“Hey, you okay?” Bucky tentatively asked, hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jacket.

“No.”

 

The sharp dismissal made him flinch. To him, it was barely last week that he’d gone to bed, same as always for the past six months, by your side. It was barely last week when he’d let you put his new arm on, savoring the way your fingers so gently brushed up against the seam of his shoulder. Barely last week when he put his hand on your foot, taking the initiative to comfort you. It was barely last week when he made a promise to go back to you.

“I’m real sorry,” he whispered, taking a step closer. He shut his eyes. “I’m real sorry I left you alone.”

You clenched your jaw harder as tears welled up, blurring his face. Blood filled up your mouth as the flesh of your cheek sliced against your teeth.

“Can I still make it up to you?”

“You don’t even know me anymore, Barnes.” There was a red flood in your mouth as you choked out a sob, remembering the last time he said that to you. It could have been so simple, right after the battle, to just limp back to that stupid little plot of land.

“I don’t care.” Bucky was inches away, “I don’t care what happened.” He reached out and put his hand on your shoulder before pulling you into his embrace. Sobs wracked your body as you slowly pressed yourself against him, feeling warmth for the first time in five years. There was a heartbeat in this frame; there was life.

He placed his chin on the top of your head, inhaling your scent.

“I should have said it earlier, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you wait.”

Both of you knew what he was referring to, and the gravity of his unspoken admission falls heavy over the garden plot.

It had been a miracle that you’d stayed in one piece all those years, feeling so often on the precipice of losing your mind altogether. The patchwork quilt of your memories had only barely been sewn back on before it was torn loose with Bucky’s disappearance. In his arms, you felt yourself come undone, relieved finally of your sorrow.

“After this, we can go back. I promise.”

 

Bucky Barnes wasn’t a man of many words, but he always meant the things he said. He held you tighter to him, as if he might let you slip inside him body and melt into his chest. For him, the last six months in Wakanda were the best and truest memories he had. The promise was sincere, sewn together with every fiber of his body. He would make it happen.

 

Little did Bucky know he would break that promise to you once again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. I hope you are enjoying this rather dark and angsty fic. :)


	3. Prophecy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What depression feels like... lol also a NSFW chapter.

The cliché of kisses that feel like home is lost on you.

Bucky’s kiss doesn’t feel like home.

He kisses you as an apology, as a shame, as a reminder of his lie. It leaves the taste of that river water memory on your tongue and the sting of ash in your nose. The blood pounding in your ears drowns out the conversation in the background.

It was only supposed to be five seconds but when Bucky mutters, “I’ll miss you, pal,” you feel something dreadful grow inside, sprouting like thorns and horns to rip your guts apart. He looks far away again, and your hand intertwined with his goes numb with knowing. He recognizes what will happen and so do you. You want to scream when Steve steps on the platform but instead you glare into his eyes as he watches you back, statuesque. There’s nothing but resolve in him, mind already made up. You want to tear him to pieces.

 

“Wait, where is he?”

“He blew right past his time marker!”

You shut it out the squabble because you know where Steve is. When Bucky walks to the bench and stops, letting Sam go ahead, you angrily take your hand back because you know full well what will happen to you now.

Bucky looks down with such longing that you can only snarl in response. It twists in your stomach, that longing, that very longing you held onto for five years because he was dead. He’s looking at you now, a woman, alive and well, and flesh in front of him, as if you were millions of years away.

“Wait,” he pleads, “Wait.”

“ _No._ ” There are no tears this time. You don’t feel pain anymore; you only feel loneliness. The familiarity of it encapsulates you once more.

His kiss is his last resort. His Hail Mary to make you stay. He grabs you distraughtly by the waist and pulls your torso flush against his, pushing that once-coveted warmth of his being onto your body. You are hard and stiff, poised like a blade in his hands. His mouth is antagonistically soft and his tongue is weeping wet, beard rubbing against your face, breath shuddering to inhale as much of you as he can. Bucky selfishly holds you tighter than any bind, so strong that he’s nearly picking you up off the ground. Sam watches from the bench, glistening eyes surprised and shocked, transfixed on your wide-open stare.

 

You wipe it off when Bucky lets you go and frown at his broken expression.

“Please.” He begs again, “I just need some time... to... adjust.” He gestures to Steve, who is gazing at you from his seat, deep creases marring his features—reminders of the passage of time he’s experienced. Steve is pleading with you too, those blue-green eyes still as bright as ever, sitting in the face of his older self. You vaguely think that you really _could_ tear him to pieces at this point. It’d be the easiest fight you’ve had in years.

“I told you. You don’t know me anymore.” Is all you can say, harkening back to the moment in the garden when you tried to warn him.

You were wise enough to know he was jumping into a depth he wasn’t prepared for. He was the one who foolishly pushed forward, now stranding the both of you in the sea. It was too soon. You believed him too eagerly in the garden plot, overzealous and foolish, crumbling in his arms like a sentimental maid.

You’re tired, worn down, and so numb from the pain that you don’t think you can take another second of it. Bucky may have had the good fortune of a destruction that left him oblivious, but you’d been cursed with the desolation of being alive.

You couldn’t wait for him anymore. His request hurt you deeply—much deeper than any knife could.

“Goodbye, Bucky. I’ve loved you for the last five years. I think that’s long enough.”

 

You watch his heart break at the loaded voiced admission with a nonchalant stare.

He thinks of your love, of _your_ heart, finally pried open with laboratory sessions under his watchful eye. He thinks of it glowing in the hot Wakandan summers, quietly waiting for him by the river or under the shade of the baobab. He thinks of the youthful girl who discovered her horrors yet still continued to live by his side blissfully. He thinks of the love that was never announced, only inferred through light touches at the dinner table, fingers brushing when taking down the laundry, a clasp of his hand on your ankle.

He thinks of it, announced now, when he’s too late.

Maybe if it was five years ago and he was leaving you, it wouldn’t have been so painful. The rage that builds inside your chest grows larger and larger each passing second. Your hand shoots up to grab his chin before either of you realize it and he drops to the earth when you compel him to sleep.

In his dream, he watches your memories once again. This time you’re not the innocent bystander. You show him your path after his disappearance, fueled by madness and mourning, razing to the ground the world around you.

 

Bucky wakes in a blistering heat, drenched in sweat with Sam and Steve hanging over him. There’s dirt in his mouth and the place where you had gripped him stings with loss. You’re nowhere to be found.

-

 

Shuri brings you back to the farm and lets you rest with a polite nod of her head. She knows better than to ask about Bucky and you thank her before walking through the field and into the hut. She leaves you with a single touch on your shoulder, her lithe fingers patting a final time before she’s gone.

She promises to check in on you soon.

In the five years since you’ve been back, the grass has risen so high it’s nearly up to your chest. The animals that have return since the battle will be happy to graze on it, you think, and in a matter of weeks it will have subsided.

You try to start over on the land and resume your life before this, pacing around the dusty floor, dragging your finger along the thatched walls and wooden furniture. The now empty cup of water you had sipped that fateful morning still sits on the table, gathering cobwebs. Bucky’s sensibly made bed with his flattened pillow is a sight that makes you sigh.

It’s all too familiar and it hurts all over when you think about how it used to be so easy—something you had once grown accustomed to, something you used to look forward to. Now you move with a funny rhythm in the hut, like you’re stuck in a moment of deja-vu and can’t escape the uncanny nag.

You recall previously waking up with the rooster’s crow, so you do for the first morning after you arrive. You remember that you liked to swim before breakfast, feeding the chickens on your way to the river. You do that as well, feeling the familiar grains rolling in your palm before scattering them against the ground. The path to your swimming spot, now wild with grassland, creates a maze of prickling blades as you try to trample it down. It’s a task that will keep you busy, you think, and you save the agenda-item for the rest of the week.

As you bathe in the cool water, you try savor the sound of splashing, tweeting of birds, breeze of the wind. Your memories of solitude had too often been accompanied by silence, but now that the Earth has returned to its natural state once more, you feel unsettled by the noises from your past. The moon still hangs in the changing blues of the dawn sky, a fading waning gibbous on its way to completion, mutely gazing back at you. You stay in the river until it disappears, overtaken by the brightness of the sun.

The days drags on slower than any day you’ve spent in the last five years. You can’t help but feel yourself becoming stuck in a senseless loop of over-thinking, feeling lost in the monotony of walking to the market and engaging in brief conversation with vendors. Some of them remember you, tears filling up in their eyes upon seeing your face. You can’t quite reciprocate their joy. You busy yourself with field work in the afternoon, cutting grass down, creating footpaths around the farm, brushing the animals, or putting back up the clothesline that had hung faithfully outside the hut, clipping up some outfits along with it.

It’s exhausting, this sad repetition. You walk a path you’ve already walked before, pushing the same Sisyphean boulder uphill, doomed to be crushed beneath it every night.

 

On the fifth day, as evening falls around you, you take yourself back inside, shedding what had become damp from labor. You fold the garments neatly and place them in the corner before walking to your side of the hut- you laugh at that thought- _your_ side, as if another person inhabited the home.

You pick up a blade from the fireplace on the way—a paring knife, small enough to fit in your palm and sit.

Your hair. It’s a trivial thought, but perhaps the sensation of physically shedding a part of yourself might let you shed other parts as well.

Leaning forward, you take strips between two fingers and slowly bring the edge of the blade across. The melodic whistle it makes as it tears through the strands bring a chill up your spine. The first lock falls softly to the floor. You don’t feel lighter yet.

You continue, cutting handful after handful until the long elbow-length turns to shoulder length. Still not satisfied, you carry on. By the time you’re finished, your tresses sit as a short pixie cut, chopped unevenly, but at least it’s now out of your way. You imagine it can’t be any worse than what you looked like before. You pretend that it’s _something_.

Brushing off the stray strands that sit on your shoulder, you can feel more tickling along your back. You begin kicking the discarded hair into the fireplace to burn in the morning. It all feels so stupid, this monotony. You want to be enthusiastic about peace, and you feel ashamed that with the world back in order, you are somehow unable to follow it as if you’ve blocked your own shot at rehabilitation. The knife in your hand glimmers orange when you step outside to pull the gown from the clothesline.

The gibbous from the past few days has now reached its full cycle as an engorged blood orange that hangs high, bathing you in amber moonbeam. It’s just too perfect to be coincidence. Your eyes trace the handle of the knife by your side as you step gingerly over the dirt, meticulously turning the blade until the handle slides from your grasp and you’re palming the steel edge instead.

Prophecy called for the blood moon to be a sign of the end times. Now that the Decimation has been reversed, the ominous shape looks so feeble and benign. But now that the world continues to turn with all its little players restored, you suddenly have become lost again. You wonder with a sharp laugh if the prophecy should be interpreted more personally.

You hand absently squeezes the blade harder until it draws blood.

 

“What are you doing?”

You snap up to see Bucky standing by the clothesline, your gown hanging over his vibranium forearm. His brow is furrowed in concern at the red that drips from your fingertips. He’s only a few steps away and he’s already crossed it, smacking the knife into the grass before you can blink. The jerk of your hand sprays blood over your stomach.

You look up at him, standing in front of you, slightly open-mouthed and panting as he grabs your hand to inspect the damage you’ve done. The deep gash in your palm begins to mend itself slowly but still stares back at him, a curved sliver of wet and seeping flesh.

“What the hell are you _thinking_?”

You cock your head left to regard him, “Why are you here?” you ask instead, unsure of why he particularly thinks he has any right to be interrogating you. Why _is_ he here? What changed his mind? Your voice comes out in a hoarse rasp, pitch ducking in and out with neglect; it’d been a few days since you’ve spoken at all—the sound is strange even to your ears. You feel a flash of remembrance, back to the Decimation, when you’d go for weeks without talking.

You frown.

Bucky looks at his feet and the ground, avoiding the possibility of his eyes roaming over your body or your solemn expression. He opens the garment in his hands to drape it over your shoulder, but you slap his arm away, stepping closer until even his downcast eyes catch on your bare chest. He closes them instead.

“Why are you here.” It’s not quite a question; it’s more of a demand.

“Can you—can you put this on?”

“No. Answer me.”

 

Bucky is reminded of your pitiless tone in New York. He thinks he might as well take his chances anyway. He’s nearly driven himself mad in the last week, rehearsing this very scenario. He’s argued with Steve, argued with Sam, argued with Clint—and he didn’t even know the guy. He’s flown for eight hours to get here, he’s talked himself in circles during the flight, repeating this bit over and over until all the words became mush in his mouth. He swallows as he looks at you, skin alight in the darkness of the night. There are new scars on you that he’s never seen before, new cresent shapes, new stripes of marred skin and uneven patches. His chest tightens when he faithfully returns to the one he’s familiar with most of all.

It looks like a rope the width of his finger streaking from the corner of your left eye. It flies across your face before disappearing in the tufts of freshly cut hair. You’d always covered it up previously with long bangs, or a side part, but now it sits in the open, waiting for him to see. The scar tissue is shiny and dark, with crisscrossing bands that raise little streaks of skin in some areas and sinks as dips in others.

“I’m sorry.” He puts your head against his vibranium hand, four fingers splayed around the left side and back, cold thumb pressed on the scar he’d given you all those years ago. “I… wanted to apologize.”

Your eyebrows raise, “For _that_?”

It’s hard not to be mystified when the man who haunted you for so long and in so many ways is standing in front of you like a lovesick schoolboy, all nerves and palpable fear. You can see the red that pulses beneath his cheeks. You watch his Adam’s Apple bob.

“For everything. Will you let me make it up to you? You told me I could, remember?”

His face burns harder because the speech he had seared into his tongue on the ship sounds like a dumpster fire when he voices it. It was supposed to be _perfect_.

The laughter that erupts from your mouth shocks him because he thinks this is you forsaking him again for being too late. He thinks you’re laughing _at_ him—and when he looks up to see the tears that catch in the corners of your eyes, he knows that yes, you _are_ laughing at him, but you’re so joyful that his breath stops. He sees the person you used to be.

Bucky mirrors you without even realizing it. When you stop to catch your breath, he hushes too. “Will you put this on now?” He asks, eyes on his feet again, both hands lifting the garment up to your chest. “I’m tryin’ real hard not to stare…”

You roll your eyes and snatch the fabric up before throwing it over his shoulder. Your heart is picking up a hard rhythm as you stand up tall, leaning your head upward to face him in your entirety. You want him to see you as you are now. You want him to know that his decision faces the person you have become, not the one from his past.

He sighs deeply as he looks over you, taking in every hard ripple of muscle and soft curved line. He’s seen your shape before, hidden beneath wet clothing during the rainy months, when the storm catches the two of you during a walk. He’s seen it while you are breathing softly beneath the thin sheet at night when he gets up for water. But this time, he looks with a purpose, rather than stealing glimpses. He takes in all of you.

Before he knows it, Bucky’s hands are on your waist riding up your stomach and over your ribs, rubbing off the blood onto his own clothing. His metal hand grips your back, his flesh one against your neck. He controls your body as he pushes you against him.

It’s a brief comfort, his control, since he knows he’s not really in control of anything.

“Take off your clothes, Bucky.”

The reminder of your steely voice brings him back down. His hands let you go.

“I— right now? Here?”

You scoff and tilt your head back to the fluttering fabric in the breeze, leading the way into the house.

Bucky ducks as he shuffles in the hut, closing the flap that separates the two of you from the rest of the world. You watch him take off the navy tactical suit, unstrapping the buckles that cross his broad chest. He’s standing by the window, looking at the field outside, stomach clenched tight. You can see him breathing short, jagged breaths.

“Bucky?” You stop him from unbuckling the last strap. He looks terrified, and you step around his gaze. You don’t really know what you want, other than to just see him as he’s seen you. You’re not sure where you’re leading him to, and he seems like he’s afraid to follow.

“No.. I..” Bucky rubs his beard aggressively as he tries to find the words. The straps hang limply off his chest and he moves to take it all the way off. “I’ve just always wanted to do this right... and I guess... this isn’t how I imagined it happening.”

Your eyebrows raise, “You imagined it?” There’s the smallest hint of a smile on your lips as he peels off his top and throws it on the bed where it lands half-on before sliding off anyway. Your eyes roam his chest, tanned and broad. He moves to unbutton his pants and takes them off too. You lick your lips at his flesh, open and bare, for you to see, for you to touch.

“Yeah, you know... under the stars, on a blanket... I don’t know. Always thought after the battle I’d make it up to you then.” You walk forward, placing both hands on his chest, rubbing heat into him when he shudders. He’s warm like a fire, and your skin prickles against his when you press yourself to him.

“You’d make up almost killing me seven years ago with... a good fuck?”

He flushes head to toe and clenches his fists at his side. He still hasn’t touched you yet, even after your hands run along his back and down his hips. “I mean- I didn’t-- not... not like... _shit_. Not a _fuck_. God... you’re makin’ me so nervous.”

It was another reminder of how much you’d changed. Not once during all those months living together did you ever express a desire for him. It had always been platonic, almost clinical as you two lived in the hut. Over time, there were glances and playful banter, him grazing your elbow as you folded laundry, you picking leaves from his hair, but in this moment, and since he’d been back, you had pulled the reigns of his life in your hands and led _him_.

You push Bucky back onto the cot until his legs hit the side and he sits down reflexively with a thud. Climbing on top of him, you rest on his thighs, curling your fingers in his hair. Ochre moonlight cascades across his back, lighting up the flexed muscles. He’s grown stiff between your legs, and groans when you stroke him. It’s so silent in the hut that you can hear his heart hammering.

“Why are you nervous, Bucky?”

The man underneath your hand trembles as he finally takes his fingers from his side and puts them on your back, carefully outlining the ridges and markings.

“Everything’s different.” He mutters. “I went to sleep and woke up in the future again. But this time _you’re_... different, not me. You look different...” He runs his hand through your freshly cut hair. “You feel different,” He thumbs the slivers of your body that shine with thick scar-tissue. “You act different... but--”

He gulps and shudders a deep breath when you tug particularly hard, “I want you. Just like I wanted you then.”

The smile on your face is so sad and sweet, Bucky leans forward to kiss you but you pull back, stroking him faster. He grunts, returning the gesture with his hand, cupping his flesh palm between your legs, picking up a rhythm of motions back and forth. He doesn’t try to kiss you again. The slow moment soon becomes lost in a hectic pace of who can beat who to the finish line as the both you gasp and groan at each others’ ministrations.

When you bite down on Bucky’s shoulder he growls and hoists you up by the waist, plunging you down on top of him. He reaches all the way into the pit of your core, mouth gaping at the tightness of your center. You shift and grind on him, yanking his head back with hard pulls of his hair. Bucky grunts underneath each roll of your hips and each slap of your ass on his thighs. You ride him fast and hard, nails piercing his back, teeth dragging against his collarbone. He returns your fervor with rough squeezes to your breasts, pinches to your bottom.

He calls your name three times in-between inhales and curses before you hear the desperation in his voice. “Wait- Jesus w-wait!”

You’re barely panting when you come to a stop, a stark contrast to Bucky’s own trembling form. He scoots back further on the bed until his back reaches the cool wall. There’s sweat dripping from his brow and his lips are damp and red. Your eyes pose the question coolly, W _hat? Are you going to come?_

 _“_ This... does this feel right to you?”

You get off as soon as the words leave his lips and snatch your discarded clothing from the evening, draping it over your shoulders. The stickiness on your thighs burns hot with embarrassment. You watch Bucky on his bed, cock hard and glistening with your too-eager fluids.

“Get out.” You command, “Go back to New York. Leave me.”

“Fuck-- that’s not what I meant.”

He crosses the room and falls to his knees- something you’ve never seen him do. In all your memories, as muddled as they were, all those years intertwined with his shadow, you’ve never seen him fall to his knees.

“I don’t want to just _fuck_ you.” He mutters against your thigh, hands gripped in the deep red fabric, “I... please, I want it to mean more to you than just _fucking_.”

He takes your hand and kisses the palm with the raw, tender line. He runs his mouth onto your wrist, up your forearm. He puts his hands underneath the gown and lifts it up, bit by bit, until it’s against your stomach, exposing your wet seam to his mouth.

It’s ghostly- his first lick. It’s a slow and warm trail that dips from between your strong thighs all the way up to the nub that tingles to the touch. He does it again and again, until your legs shake and part, giving him more access. Bucky kneads your thighs, rubs your calves, gropes your waist with a desperation that he’s never shown anyone else.

You gasp when he stands and smoothly picks you up as if you weigh less than nothing and brings you back to his bed.

Your back arches when he returns devotedly down between your legs. His mouth is so wet and wonderful as he licks long lines and wide paths, crisscrossing, meandering, flicking. The moans that vibrate against your flesh sends chills all over your body. He swallows everything he can get his mouth on, savoring your flavor. It makes you sigh in delight.

His fingers explore, thrusting slowly at first before picking up a pace and pulling strangled grunts from your mouth.

Bucky had _wanted_ to make love to you, but he knows you are not a piece of glass- no longer the fragile thing he previously thought of keeping safe from harm’s way. You’re wildfire now, full of strength, able to match him in passion. His two fingers change to three, and you’re squirming as he continues to push in further, spreading you wide.

“I want you.” He kisses your breasts, “I want you to myself. To me. Just mine.”

“Is this just like you imagined?” Your voice quivers, but the challenge is still there. You watch him, hooded eyes glued to the pulsing vein in your throat. He licks his lips. 

“No, sweetheart. It’s even better. Even sweeter. Even tighter.”  
The pet name sticks to your teeth like a caramel chew, funny-feeling, but runs down your throat all sugary anyway. You swallow it down, unsure how you like it yet.

He doesn’t resist when you sit up and flip him over. You switch places and get on top again, sliding down his length with a satisfied hum. Bucky arches into your core, pulling your waist down as far as you’ll go, watching you with his jaw clenched. You slam down on him over and over, hand returning to his scalp to pull and knead. His eyes roll back with every thrust and pull, crying out when you yank a handful of hair.

“Jesus, fuck!” He calls as you grind on top, pushing so hard his head rubs against your cervix. Bucky swears there’s constellations blooming behind your back as he blinks the tingling away.

“Yeah?” You ask, “You there, Bucky?”

“F-fuck... oh my God.” He takes your hand from his scalp and plunges a finger in his mouth instead, sucking on your digits as his body continues rolling against yours. He’s stuttering, a mess of cries and grunts, mouth warm and hot against your fingers as he climaxes.

When he comes, it’s so hard that he sees stars explode behind your figure. He watches the cosmos erupt into dust and energy, firing flares and silently imploding. You’re a massive blur of dusk and darkness, your mouth open, teeth white against the night, bare in the sliver of a half-smile. A shudder grips your body and you come down from your own high hovering over him, pulling your finger from his mouth. He thinks you look terrifying and beautiful. He doesn’t know what else to feel. You could probably snap his neck right now and he’d let you.

“Buck?”

“Y-yeah?”

Your eyes glow in the dark as you watch his breathing slow.

“Want to go for a swim?”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! The reader's character is s-c-a-r-y, not gonna lie. There's a heckin' lot of damage there and our poor Bucky is just trying his best. Let me know what you think :)


	4. Back to the Start

At the river, Bucky washes your back and grazes your neck, rubbing water into your skin to get what is him off. You press your fingers on the streaks that your nails and teeth left behind, stroking him fondly. He is orange and burning under the moon. He is fluttering with fire and life. You let him kiss you in the water, breathe against you, strip away the memories of drowning in 2014.

He makes love to you on the bank. This time he is in control. He makes you come twice, just because he can, and because you let him. Your body resonates against his, the pent-up yearning of warmth and connection overtaking your senses. Bucky kisses you everywhere he can reach.

“When do you leave?” You ask after he’s finished, finding yourself returned to reality once again. The sheet you’ve brought with you is soaked through but does its job of keeping the grains of dirt off your body as you lie down. You think he looks guilty as he tucks his chin to his chest, wet hair dripping all over. “I’m not stupid.” You say, tone too sharp, “Maybe _you_ are, though. Coming here like this.”

Bucky rubs his beard, the signal of frustration at your impassive tone. “I’m not leaving, Jesus. Can you stop being so... _aggressive_ for a sec?”

He lies on his side next to you, one arm bent as he rests his head in his hand. He’s looking at you with so much worry that you remember the night he threw you into the shower. He’s looking at you like you’re part monster. Maybe you are. Maybe it’s what you’ve become.

Except this time, his hand is creating a path from your neck to your hip, drawing circles and squiggles as he watches you think over his statement. When you don’t respond, he sighs.

“Steve’s the one who told me I should go.” Your eyes flick over to him, critical at the mention of Steve’s name. You’ve yet to express it in words, but Bucky knows just how angry you are. “I know. Look, I _know_. You don’t have to forgive him yet, but he convinced me to not miss out on this...”

“On _what_?”

“On what he missed out on the first time, the reason why he decided to go back.”

You scoff, turning your body so that you face him, you put your head against your palm and sneer. The expression brings Bucky’s eyebrows together. You smile at him bitterly, this sorrowful man, this man who you feel so much and yet so little for. It’s a vicious little thought that continues to tunnel itself in your head: Do you truly love him? Or do you love the memory of him, the fantasy of him?

His fingers stop moving as you stare, eyes traveling from his pinched brow to his slanted mouth, to his throat, to his chest, rising and falling in apprehension. You feel funnier the longer you look, and you make yourself turn away when his face stops making any sense to you. You can’t remember him, you realize suddenly. You can’t remember who he was—not really.

All those flashes of the walks you used to take, they’re so hazy and far away that all you can evoke is the unclear shape of his body. Even the night before the battle, when you think about lying in the cot and his hand on your ankle, you’re watching it like a shitty old film reel, a single audience member in a too-big theatre.

What you _do_ remember is the years and years of killing afterwards.

“Don’t do that,” Bucky whispers fiercely, “Don’t _go there_.”

He even sounds unreal. He calls your name. He grabs your face and smashes his lips to yours over and over again until your head spins for an entirely different reason. When he releases your mouth, he’s still holding on to your cheeks. “I don’t _care_ if you can’t remember anything. I don’t _care_ how fucked up you think you are. You showed me what happened and I’m here. Aren’t I?” He looks like he’s on the verge of tears.

“Don’t _fucking_ dissociate just because you can’t handle this right now. Don’t run away from me again.”

The words tumble around in your head.

“God damn it, girl. You gotta be the most stubborn woman I ever met. You were stubborn in New York, stubborn in Vienna, stubborn enough to follow me here, stubborn still now. _Look_ at me.”

You take the chance to comply and it’s enough to secure your mind back in the moment. In his wintry blue gaze, you swim along a gentle current brimming with emotion and promise.

“Gimme another chance. I’m here now. I want to be with you, whoever you are, exactly how you are. Let me wake you up with kisses, let me call you baby and sugar and kitten, and all manners of sweetness. Let me walk with you again through the dirt, get caught in the storms, herd the goats and feed the chickens.” He’s dreamy-eyed and stares off into the glistening black current of the river.

“What do you think, sweetheart?”

 _Sweetheart_. It’s sticking again to your throat as it drips. A heart that’s sweet. How indulgent.

But it determinedly washes over you anyway, warm and tingly, and a small smile is summoned to your lips that Bucky eager kisses, tongue flicking into your mouth. “Thassa yes?” He’s bright-eyed now, and bursting with excitement.

“Yeah.” You sigh. Relenting. “Sure. Bucky. Yes.”

 

Under the blood moon Bucky Barnes presses his mouth to yours. He hums a tune as he kisses down your throat.

“Don’t gotta be perfect,” he exhales against your chest, “It ain’t always a straight line. I’ll walk the loops an’ detours with you every day if I have to, honey. It’s all worth it, to be back here with you…”

You let yourself go with his touch, eyes slipping closed as he continues to ramble into the side of your breast, your ribs, your waist. He trails down further and further, an acolyte at worship, venerating each scar and wound on your flesh. The two of you glow flushed and red on the riverbank, awash in affection for each other. It surges, the new and old feelings alike as you cling onto him, tears streaking down your face.

All the painful, unyielding, incoherent memories you have may make up who you are, but as you lie on the riverbank with your lover tight in your embrace, you think maybe this can be the one that changes everything. You tug on Bucky’s hair to bring him back up to you and hold his face in your hands.

He’s smiling so sweetly, just like in your dreams. He’s looking at you like you never thought was possible.

Your blood scalds when you caress him, and the both of you begin to breathe in uneven gasps. You lick the salted sweat of your skin from Bucky’s mouth and he does the same to your tears before returning to kiss you.  

The painful memories you held onto all those years crumble to ash against his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! <3


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